A new RMIT-led research project is getting a cash boost from Google to investigate search engine effectiveness.

RMITComputer Science&IT's insight:

Lead researcher Associate Professor Falk Scholer is delighted with the $US56,000 Google Faculty Research Award for the project in the area of information retrieval, extraction, and organisation. “It's particularly exciting to receive support for this kind of research into search engine effectiveness from a leader in web search, like Google,” said Falk. The Google award will fund user-study experiments and support a top research student to work on the project, titled “Magnitude Estimation for the Evaluation of Search Systems”. Great work, Falk!

Our start-up community here in Australia has long bemoaned the scarcity of capital available to fuel local start-ups. It is easy to see why US-based ventures seem to be raising hundreds of millions in funding every week.

RMITComputer Science&IT's insight:

Is launching a tech startup easier in Australia?

Writing in The Australian, RMIT CSIT grad and Rome2Rio founder Michael Cameron passes on his experience of trying to raise investment funding in Australia, with advice on how to get your business up and running.

Stream Do humans pose a greater risk than machines? by Official938LIVE from desktop or your mobile device

RMITComputer Science&IT's insight:

Do humans pose a greater risk than machines? RMIT University's robot king James Harland talks to Bharati Jagdish on Singapore radio station 938LIVE about the positive impact of Artificial Intelligence on society.

Christmas has come early for award-winning game developer Josh Caratelli; named first on Triple J's list of 25 people under 25 who are absolutely nailing it.

As well as beginning his Bachelor of Computer Science at RMIT, the first year student has had a massive year: winning iAwards, releasing the eco-friendly Smog Game for iPad and iPhone, speaking at major national games festivals and representing Australia at an international tech awards event in Sri Lanka.

RMITComputer Science&IT's insight:

Whew! Well done, Josh, and hope you get to put your feet up over the Christmas break!

The winning team, Personal Protective Equipment of Things (PPE of Things), was made up of RMIT University students and CSIRO scientists.

RMITComputer Science&IT's insight:

StartupSmart reports on the RMIT/CSIRO team that won the Unearthed Melbourne Hackathon.

They took the top prize for solving a real world mining problem by using sensors in an Internet of Things (IoT) system that sends alerts to smartphones if personal protective equipment (PPE) is being misused.

The smart tech innovation is called "PPE of Things" and RMIT team members included RMIT Research Fellow Prem Jayaraman and PhD candidates Jonathan Liono and Ali Yavari.

Dr Andy Song is joining the international jet set At B20 Turkey, as he flies off tonight along with other global leaders, bound for Istanbul and the business offshoot of the G20 Summit.

Andy is one of only four Australians invited to attend B20, the other three Australians are all prominent business leaders: Robert Milliner (B/G20 2014 Australia Sherpa), Andrew Crane, CEO of CBH, and John Denton, CEO of Corrs Chambers Westgarth.

Johanne Trippas is a PhD researcher in Computer Science at RMIT University. For Johanne, RMIT is a place where she can pursue her dreams of a world in which everyone has the ability to access information. With the support from her supervisors, Professor Mark Sanderson, Associate Professor Lawrence Cavedon and Dr Damiano Spina, she works toward developing a sophisticated conversational search system.

RMIT's new Cloud Computing course is enabling students to develop innovative, industry-standard tech tools and apps, through a collaboration with IBM Research Australia and using IBM's Bluemix cloud platform.

More than 200 students took the first semester of the course, which combines theory with practical sessions and projects, to give a crucial technical edge for future employment across a range of industries.

The course is part of degree programs run by RMIT's School of Computer Science and IT, and is coordinated by Associate Professor Ibrahim Khalil, with head tutor and PhD student, Abdur Forkan, assisting him in preparing and running the hands-on lab materials.

Guest lecturer, Dr. Christian Vecchiola, a Research scientist at IBM Research Australia, is currently working in the development of emergency management application solutions based on cloud computing. RMIT alumnus, Dr. Mahathir Almashor, is also working as a research scientist with IBM Research Australia, and he helped prepare practical lab materials using IBM Bluemix cloud services.

Computer Science at RMIT is now rated among the world's top 200 universities in the prestigious Shanghai Jiao Tong rankings, comfortably in Australia's top 8 and with the good company of ANU and University of Sydney also ranked top 200.

RMIT University has never before featured in Shanghai Jiao Tong's prestigious Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), which largely measures research impact combined with staff and alumni achievement.

RMITComputer Science&IT's insight:

Computer Science continues to lead the way at RMIT!

This time becoming the first area of RMIT to ever be ranked in Shanghai Jiao Tong's prestigious Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), which prioritises research excellence and academic achievement in its methodology.

This ranking places us in the top eight universities in Australia for Computer Science, which also correlates with the QS World University rankings.

All in all, this reinforces the School's position as one of RMIT's leading lights and recognises the success and dedication of staff.

Underlining his status as an internationally-recognised authority on big data, data analytics and database systems, RMIT University's Professor Timos Sellis is interviewed in the flagship magazine of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the world's largest educational and scientific computing society.

In the interview, Professor Sellis describes the motivations behind his research interests and outlines the aims and expectations he holds for the NICTA RMIT Data Analytics Lab, which he leads jointly with Professor Mark Sanderson (also of RMIT).

There may be a problem with the link, but check out the home page for the August edition of Communications of the ACM magazine: http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2015/8 Timos' story is on page 15 (you can download the PDF of the magazine)

A new free calendar app designed by students puts the RMIT timetable system at your fingertips, integrating with your calendar to ensure you’re on time every time.

The app, called TimeWell, merges course timetables seamlessly with your calendar and updates to reflect room or time changes. It also keeps you updated with events and activities nearby.

The team behind the app all study with RMIT Computer Science and IT and consist of a mix of undergrad, postgrad and honours students - all united by a desire to create an app that makes life easier for themselves and their fellow students.

RMITComputer Science&IT's insight:

According to Senior Lecturer Dr Andy Song, who provided advice to the team, there's no app like this at the moment and he believes students will find the app simple and easy-to-use.

"Time Well aims to reduce frustrations for students and staff," said Andy. "Staying on top of busy campus life is always a challenge and it's great to see a group of our own students taking up this mission and using what they learnt, to help other fellow students and improve their study experience."

Visiting RMIT from Finland's University of Turku, Mikko-Jussi Laakso will be speaking about how tutorial-based learning can improve student performance. Come along on Friday at 11.30am to RMIT's SAB Building on Swanston Street, Melbourne.

RMIT researchers have been awarded $4.9 million in the latest round of Australian Research Council (ARC) funding schemes.

The School of Computer Science and IT has two of the six Discovery grants led by RMIT, plus Professor Xun Yi is also on a Discovery with Newcastle University. Overall, a great result for Computer Science research at RMIT.

Professor Timos Sellis from the School of Computer Science and Information Technology received $270,000 for a project on Effective and efficient query processing over dynamic social networkProfessor Athman Bouguettaya from the School of Computer Science and Information Technology received $339,000 for a project on Long-term cloud service composition

A student-designed iPad game that shows children the benefit of reducing their carbon footprint will represent Australia at the international round of the Asia Pacific ICT Alliance Awards in Sri Lanka, from 18-22 November, after winning a National iAward in August.

In the mean time, Smog Game developer Josh Caratelli has been busy at Melbourne International Games Week, with a speaking engagement at the Education in Games Summit, as well as attending PAX Australia and Game Connect Asia Pacific (GCAP), Australia's premier game development conference.

In this story, Josh discusses the challenges he faced in developing the game while studying for his VCE and looks forward to his plans for life after he's finished his Bachelors of Computer Science at RMIT.

RMITComputer Science&IT's insight:

Josh Caratelli has been flat out this past week, what with launching his iAward-winning Smog Game and attending events and conferences (and speaking at one of them!) during Melbourne International Games Week. He probably hasn't had time to think about his upcoming trip to Sri Lanka for the Asia Pacific ICT Alliance Awards in Colombo (from 18-22 November), for which he's representing Australia after winning the National iAward in August. I'm sure everyone at the School wishes him the best of luck. Go Josh!

After a four-month placement in London with award-winning game development studio Media Molecule, Cherie Davidson has accepted a position as associate producer, starting in January.

Earlier this year, Cherie was also named one of the 75 most influential women across all facets of the Australian and New Zealand games industries.

Having completed two games degrees at RMIT, Cherie's passion for her work is clear, and in this interview she discusses her role and experiences, the issue of women's representation in the games industry and her hopes for the future.

RMITComputer Science&IT's insight:

Congratulations to Cherie Davidson for becoming an Associate Producer with London game development studio Media Molecule - well done, Cherie!

She starts work in January, though is currently in Melbourne making her farewells and checking out Melbourne International Games Week, PAX Australia and more, over the next few weeks.

She'll be sadly missed both here at RMIT and in the Melbourne Games scene generally, not least by her erstwhile mentor Dr Fabio Zambetta, who will need another tutor for Games and Graphics Programming!

An Australia-wide cyber security hacking competition brought Channel 7 to RMIT's SAB, Building 80, in Melbourne, to find out what the student teams were doing and why data security is such a priority issue for government and business.

Professor Mark Sanderson from RMIT's School of Computer Science and IT described how it is the 'holes' in websites that let the hackers in and lead to data leaks, while student Chris Heuvel spoke how hackers could 'break' websites to leave them unusable.

Cyber Security Challenge Australia (CySCA) is a ‘hacking’ competition for tertiary students run by an alliance of Australian Government, business and academic professionals who are committed to finding the next generation of Australian cyber security talent. It ran for 24 hours from midday Wednesday 30 September to midday Thursday 1 October with no breaks. Teams compete from their home campus while Telstra administers the game from Sydney.

The event is being run because there remains an IT security skills shortage in Australia, and there is a growing need for cyber security professionals in both government and private sectors, with Telstra heavily involved in hosting the Challenge.

This is the third year the event is being held and this year is bigger than ever, with 64 teams entering from 23 tertiary institutions around Australia.

Dr Fengling Han, who mentors the teams entering from RMIT, says that several students from RMIT got internship and graduate positions after competed in CySCA 2013 and 2014.

Despite a tricky start, due to technical issues that delayed the four RMIT teams from getting started for several hours, they finished a creditable second in Victoria, behind Monash University, and around the mid-table mark nationally.

"I am very happy that CSIT has more and more students interested in the Cyber Security Challenge," said Dr Han.

"This is the only nationwide Cyber Security Challenge organised by government agencies with sponsors of Telstra, PwC, NBN, etc. There is a skill shortage in Cyber Security areas in Australia and the Telstra representative who came to RMIT yesterday said that if there are talented students, they will offer them jobs, so it's a great opportunity for everyone who gets involved with the competition."

Great Channel 7 news segment on the four student teams from RMIT competing in Cyber Security Challenge Australia this week. Professor Mark Sanderson explained what the problems with cyber security entail, while CSIT student Chris Heuvel described how hackers can 'break' a website.

Great work by all involved, including Dr Fengling Han and Dr Ron van Schyndel, and well done to the RMIT CSIT teams who battled inhibiting technical difficulties to finish second in Victoria and mid-table in Australia overall.

Well done to all the RMIT students who got involved in ANZ's hackathon at tech hub York Butter Factory last weekend. Using hybrid cloud development platform IBM Bluemix the students developed apps to meet challenges set down by ANZ's tech leaders. From the video it looks like it was a terrific experience and a great weekend all round with networking opportunities galore.

The school would like to thank ANZ, IBM and York Butter Factory for putting on such a great event. Hopefully we can do more of this sort of thing in the future.

We'd also like to thank CSIT manager student projects Barti Murugesan for all his hard work in bringing this event to fruition. Barti did a marvellous job - well done!

RMIT is strengthening its relationship with India by awarding internships to postgraduate students from an Indian institution to develop cloud support applications.

RMIT’s Australia-India Research Centre for Automation Software Engineering (AICAUSE) awarded internships to two fourth-year integrated Masters of Technology (iMTech) students from International Institute of Information Technology Bangalore (IIIT-B) to develop next-generation applications in cloud support for industrial automation engineering and personal safety monitoring.

RMITComputer Science&IT's insight:

Collaborative links with India have yielded internship opportunities for Indian students at RMIT's AICAUSE centre.

Our Fellows undertake research within our existing teams in order to make a significant impact in the area of their specialisation and be influential in expanding the knowledge of their relevant discipline.

The Vice-Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellowships is a competitive scheme for researchers within five years post PhD. Awardees are selected on the basis of their emerging track record and potential to develop into independent researchers who can undertake high quality research in one of RMIT's research priority areas.

RMITComputer Science&IT's insight:

RMIT VC Martin Bean has announced the successful recipients of the inaugural Vice-Chancellor's Postdoctoral Fellowships with CSIT's Dr Yongli Ren named among them - congratulations, Yongli!

His research focus is on indoor information retrieval, particularly the development of a model designed to track visitors’ physical and web behaviour.

His research collaborations on personalised information retrieval resulted in the development of a differential privacy method to address issues in collaborative filtering related to privacy.

RMIT VC's Postdoctoral Fellows undertake research within existing teams in order to make a significant impact in the area of their specialisation and be influential in expanding the knowledge of their relevant discipline.

Themed ‘Transforming Big Data Into Knowledge’, the two-day conference organised by Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (Unimas) attracted some 100 participants from around the globe.

The aim of the biennial conference is to bring together researchers and industrial practitioners with a common interest in IT, specifically in research about Big Data.

Our own Professor Timos Sellis was among a prestigious field of keynote speakers, including such leading lights as Professor Bebo White (SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Stanford, USA), Professor Geoff Holmes (University of Waikato, New Zealand), and Professor Ku Ruhana Ku Mahamud (Universiti Utara Malaysia), as well as significant industry figures.

Leading the keynotes in Kuching, Professor Timos Sellis speaks on Data Ecosystems: From Very Large Data Bases to Big Data Infrastructures at biennial Big Data conference CITA 2015. Read more about the conference: http://www.cita.my/

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